"Goodbye to all the
night life: the gilded singing girl in her enamelled hair-do, her stage makeup,
her tight-fitting gown with its slit skirt breaking at the silk-clad hip ...
the hundred dance halls and the thousands of taxi dollars; the opium dens and
gambling halls ... the sailors in their smelly bars and friendly brothels on
Sichuan Road; the myriad short-time whores and pimps busily darting in and out
of the alleyways ... gone the wickedest and most colourful city of the old
Orient: goodbye to all that."
-Edgar Snow
The Japanese invasion led to severe
changes in the lifestyles of the Shanghai residents. Freedoms which had
heretofore been a given were now only available to those who could offer
something in return, usually cash, information, or favours – sexual or economic
- to the representatives of the new regime. This system of barter and
favouritism was a slippery slope: the Japanese had vested interests in keeping
the Shanghai population off-balance and the terms of their various arrangements
shifted constantly and unpredictably. Military matters were largely in the
hands of the Japanese Naval Intelligence
and the implicit threats of their shadowy military police – the Kempeitai – enforced their decisions.
The Germans initially expected to get
along quite well with the Japanese: historically, neither country had made much
headway in gaining extraterritorial status in China and they both lacked many
of the legal and economic benefits extended to other countries. As united Axis
powers they rubbed along quite nicely at the start: Nazi military efforts were
co-ordinated by a secret organisation known as the Siefken Bureau which worked well with the German Embassy, held the Gestapo excesses mainly in check and
established a good working relationship with the Japanese; this happy
arrangement was overturned in favour of a new order, called the Ehrhardt Bureau, which set free the
Gestapo dogs, estranged the German diplomats and began alienating the Japanese
with its loud declamations on the superiority of the “white races”. Nazi
intelligence-gathering in the city became a farce and an embarrassment to the
Nazi high command; what successes they did obtain were largely due to the
ineptitude of the Allies.
US Intelligence in the form of the OSS (Office
of Strategic Services) were given an entree
to China by the Generalissimo, Chiang Kai-shek. They had bases in Shanghai and
Chungking and were continually jollied along by the Kuomintang. As in the
previous century, the Americans were not easily convinced to take a hand in
Chinese affairs: the Asian-Pacific theatre was not seen as strategic or vital
to the War effort and it took a lot of convincing by KMT leaders to get them
motivated. Once in the game, the Americans – already floating on a sense of
self-importance instilled by Chinese flattery – became disheartened by the
relative power and resources held by the British; cables relayed to Washington
accused the British of being ‘entrenched and divided, due to vested economic
interests’, ‘unwilling to cede control’ and with an ‘attitude of entitlement’.
It was decided that information and resources would not be shared with the
British agents.
This was a blow to the English. Whatever
the truth of the Americans’ assessment of their capabilities, the British were
counting largely upon the fact that the Americans were an unknown quantity in
Shanghai and the rest of China; the cosy alliance they had reached with the
Kuomintang meant that British economic interests in Shanghai and elsewhere were
now under threat: those resources had been weighed up and greedily targeted as
much by KMT troops as by the Communists and it began to look as though the US was
going to wrest them away from Britain and hand them to Chiang Kai-shek. In
response, the British decided to set up their own intelligence networks and run
them by and for themselves. The SOE (Strategic Operations Executive) opened
its Oriental Mission and set about
intelligence-gathering.
To undertake these efforts was bad enough
without being able to count on Allied support; however, the establishment of
the Oriental Mission was fraught with
disasters due to a lack of experience and communication. The original head of
the intelligence network in Shanghai was sacked and sidelined to Singapore, a
state of affairs that meant the Mission
could never quite be sure of support from that quarter. The new head of the Mission had little experience in his new
role and his efforts were routinely seen through by the Axis powers and their
spies. It would not be until much later in the War when clearer and wiser heads
took over that the Allies began to work together and make inroads against the
oppressors.
So what did all this mean to the ordinary
Shanghai dweller? In a continuing spirit of hedonism and money-making, many
Shanghailanders and Shanghainese became informants, paid by various factions to
uncover useful truths about the opposition. Of course, information was seen as
merely a commodity and it was only handed over to the highest bidder.
Consequently, informants became double- and triple agents, working exclusively
for no-one but themselves. Ironically, especially given the resources committed
to Shanghai by the various official spy networks, they were also the best and
most adept intelligence-gatherers in the region.
An
abandoned Chinese baby cries amidst the ruins of Shanghai’s North Station after
a Japanese bombing attack
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